Shell Chemicals in Singapore

Factsheet for Shell Chemicals in Singapore

Shell has been in Singapore for more than 120 years, and it is one of the largest foreign investors in the country. Its long history in Singapore began in Pulau Bukom. Today, Bukom has developed into one of the most important Shell production sites in the world.

Bukom is the largest wholly-owned Shell refinery globally in terms of crude distillation capacity (500,000 barrels per day). It is also home to a world-class Ethylene Cracker Complex (up to a million tonnes per annum) and a Butadiene Extraction Unit (155,000 tonnes per annum).

With the completion of the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex (SEPC) project in May 2010, Bukom is now an integrated oil and petrochemicals site, with manufacturing facilities for fuels, lubricant base oils and specialty chemicals.

Integrating the refining and petrochemicals assets maximise the economic and efficiency benefits in terms of feedstocks, operations and logistics. Feedstock flexibility helps the site maximise returns as economics shift between hydrocarbon streams, and more importantly, provides greater security of supply for Shell’s customers.

Bukom is situated on a 243-hectare island 5.5 km southwest of Singapore. It forms part of a group of southern islands that have been identified for petrochemical and other industrial manufacturing.

Ethylene Cracker Complex capacity expansion

In 2015, Shell announced it has successfully upgraded its Singapore Ethylene Cracker Complex (ECC), bolstering the company’s largest refining-chemicals integrated site. The ECC started with a capacity of 800,000 tonnes and the upgrading has boosted production of ethylene to up to one million tonnes a year. The project has also reduced the ECC’s per unit energy consumption by about 7% and CO2 emissions by 11%. The investment will generate additional volumes to help Shell meet growing demand from customers in the region and will further unlock value from integration with the refinery and Shell’s derivatives manufacturing activities on Jurong Island.

SJI’s chemical manufacturing assets produce:

Ethylene oxide (which is converted into ethylene glycols and high purity ethylene oxide) and ethoxylates. These products are used in applications such as polyester fibres, polyester resins and surfactants.

Styrene monomer, the starting material for plastics such as polystyrene, expandable polystyrene and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene. The main applications for these products are in the automotive, electrical, appliances and packaging industries.

Propylene oxide, which is used in a wide range of chemical derivatives including polyols, propylene glycols (namely monopropylene glycol and dipropylene glycol), glycol ether solvents and flame retardants.

Polyols, the main derivative of propylene oxide, which are used primarily to produce polyurethane foams, coatings, elastomers, adhesives and sealants.

Products are supplied to customers via pipelines. SJI also has a road car loading facility to transport its products to local customers through road cars. In addition to that, products are shipped through an Oiltanking Odfjell Terminal Singapore (OOTS) jetty to the Asia Pacific region, Africa, Europe and the Americas.